1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to lasers, and, specifically, to semiconductor lasers, including semiconductor lasers of the tunable variety.
2. Description of Related Art
Semiconductor lasers are commonly employed in a wide variety of applications, including computer networking, telecommunications, and numerous consumer electronics devices. Disclosures of prior art semiconductor lasers may be found, for example, in the following U.S. patents, the entirety of which are all hereby incorporated by reference: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,896,325; 4,608,697; 5,353,295; 5,262,360; 5,696,023; 5,567,980; and 5,373,522.
The present invention relates to coupled-cavity semiconductor lasers, and methods for tuning such lasers. The present invention has particular, but not necessarily exclusive, application to tunable lasers for use in systems operating in the wavelengths ranges of 300 nm to 3000 nm. One particular application for the present invention is in 10 Gigabit fiber optical transceivers, fabricated in accordance with the 10 GBASE-LX4 standard (IEEE 802.3ae-2002), requiring four lasers with center wavelengths in the vicinity of 1275 nm, 1300 nm, 1325 nm, and 1350 nm, respectively.